Determinants of Student Satisfaction while working in Groups

Abstract

The increasing popularity of team structures in business environment coupled with the common practice of including group projects/assignments in university curricula means that business schools should direct efforts towards maximizing team as well as personal results. Yet, most frameworks for studying teams center exclusively on team level outcomes to address organizational needs. Far fewer studies have examined effectiveness at individual team member level in an educational context. The quantitative study on which this paper is based investigated the impact of team process on the effectiveness of individual satisfaction in group work amongst business students in Hong Kong with work group effectiveness and management educational literature providing the theoretical background. The study surveyed 489 university business students and revealed that all three team process factors, namely workload sharing, mutual support and communication play a positive and significant role in individual satisfaction in team settings.

Keywords: Individual Satisfaction; Team Process; Workload Sharing; Mutual Support; Communication; Group Work; Teamwork; Student Project